Integration monitor is a daily Latvian press digest on ethnic minority and society integration issues. The Monitor reviews the biggest Latvian dailies: Diena, Latvijas Avize, Neatkariga (in Latvian language), Vesti Segodnya (in Russian language). In specific cases other information sources are used. Latvian Centre for Human Rights is not responsible for information published by the media.

• President’s commission on constitutional rights: foreseeing irrevocable articles in the Constitution of Latvia is not the best solution for strengthening the core of the Constitution
• Chas and Vesti Segodnya report about opening of a monument to Latvian Waffen SS legionnaires in Bauska

The President’s commission on constitutional rights considers that foreseeing irrevocable articles in the Constitution of Latvia is not the best solution for strengthening the core of the Constitution. According to the head of the commission Egils Levits, the better way would be to reflect the core of the Constitution in its preamble. As reported, some politicians came with an initiative to set irrevocable articles in the Constitution regarding the state language and other issues concerning national state as a response to the referendum on granting Russian language status of a state language in Latvia and collection of signatures for referendum on granting citizenship to non-citizens. Mr Levits believes that the principle core of the Constitution should say that Latvia is democratic, legal, socially responsible and national state. Identity of Latvian state is reflected in the articles on its territory and Latvian language as the state language. By setting irrevocable articles it would be forbidden to make amendments to the articles which could strengthen the core even more – believes Egils Levits. Diena, Latvijas Avize, Neatkariga, Chas

Chas and Vesti Segodnya report about opening of a monument to the three police battalions of Latvian Waffen SS legionnaires in Bauska (town in the central part of Latvia). The title on the monument says “To the liberators of Bauska against second Soviet occupation. Latvia should be ethnic Latvian state.” The Latvian Union against Nazism calls to remove the monument from the town’s centre to the fraternal cemetery because the two of three police battalions mentioned on the monument were the Nazi punitive units and took part in the genocide crimes in Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine in 1942-1944. Establishment of the monument also evoked wave of criticism from Russian Embassy in Latvia and Russia’s mass media.